An enforcement appeal does not reopen the trial: CCR rejects a plea left without arguments

A debtor asked the Constitutional Court for the right to reargue, at the enforcement stage, the legal basis of the judgment being enforced against him. The Court never even reached the substance of the request, because it found no actual criticism in it. Decision no. 109 of 5 February 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 588 of 20 July 2026, rejects the plea as inadmissible. It is a further confirmation of the limits of the enforcement appeal, after the Court had already settled the rules on the 15-day deadline for this remedy.

The provision at issue is Article 713(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure. It states that, where enforcement is carried out on the basis of a court or arbitral decision, the debtor may not raise, by way of an enforcement appeal, matters of fact or of law that he could have raised during the first-instance proceedings or in an appeal that was open to him.

The plea was raised in 2021, in a case pending before the District 5 Court of Bucharest, which concerned an enforcement appeal. The author argued that the provision lacks clarity and foreseeability and that it infringes his free access to justice, his equality before the law and his right to a defence, because the court should not confine itself to the lawfulness of the enforceable title but should also be able to review the legal foundation of that title.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the practical one: nothing changes. A decision rejecting a plea as inadmissible leaves the statutory text exactly as it was. Article 713(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure continues to apply in identical terms.

The second effect concerns method, and it matters for anyone raising a plea of unconstitutionality. The Court restates the reasoning of Decision no. 1.313 of 4 October 2011: every plea has three elements, the contested provision, the constitutional provision said to have been breached, and the reasoning that explains the conflict between them. The first two can be established in absolute terms, the third depends on the author. Without it, the plea does not exist as such.

The third effect follows from that: if no reasonable criticism can be discerned from the constitutional provision invoked, because it is worded in general terms, the plea is rejected as inadmissible. The Court cites Decision no. 785 of 16 June 2011, according to which the mere listing of constitutional or treaty provisions cannot be regarded as a genuine complaint of unconstitutionality.

The fourth effect concerns the role of the Court itself. If it were to examine a plea that is only sketchily reasoned, the constitutional court would be putting itself in the place of the author when framing the complaints, which would amount to a review of its own motion, something the Romanian system does not allow.

The fifth effect, although the decision does not state it expressly, is the indirect confirmation of the position taken in the file by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and by the referring court. Both pointed out that the enforceable title comes from proceedings conducted with all procedural safeguards and that re-examining the merits at the enforcement stage would encroach on res judicata.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

In law, nothing. Article 713(1) remains in force in the same wording, and the enforcement appeal keeps the same subject matter: the lawfulness of the enforcement measures and, where appropriate, clarification of the meaning, scope or application of the operative part of the judgment.

The same limit works in criminal matters, where the Court held that a denunciation acted upon after a final conviction does not turn into a sentence reduction through a challenge to enforcement.

What is added is one more piece to the case law on the admissibility of pleas. The referring court had stated, in its own opinion, that the contested provision does not allow the judgment under enforcement to be amended or set aside, and that the only defences on the merits that may be admitted are those concerning grounds for extinguishing the obligation which arose after the judgment became final. The Court did not endorse that reading through an analysis of its own, because it never reached the merits, but neither did it contradict it.

One detail of the file says something about how long proceedings take. The proof of service of the summons on the author of the plea was returned to the Court marked „addressee deceased”, and no documents were filed regarding the joinder of any successors to the proceedings. More than five years passed between the raising of the plea, in May 2021, and the publication of the decision, in July 2026.

The decision was delivered unanimously and is final and generally binding.

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